– fine acoustic folk & neo-classic & alt country & some dream pop –

Archive for the ‘update’ Category

Just wanted to let you folks know that I’m still alive and not yet vanished from this earth. I’m still trying to finish my studies (the master’s thesis in Philosophy is written already and one of the final tests is over, too). There are more to come though and even if everything goes well with the German Studies exams, especially those in linguistics, I’m not done before fall this year. Until then there will be no CFM activity, because I’m not yet sure if I will continue the blog in the way I did.

The most important decision I have to make is the following: Writing in English certainly has it’s advantages especially because you reach a wider audience. But as I’m also very fond of my native language, German, I’m considering to switch over to it. Not only does it take less time to write the articles and to proof-read them, it also gives me a larger range expressing my emotions and feelings. But I’m not yet sure about this point and I will let time decide what to do.
The other point, and on this I’m sure already, is the interval in which new articles will be posted. The daily thing surely is a great challange but finding new music, reading news of tons of blogs and posting stuff that isn’t a bare copy of the other blogs takes hours and hours of time. Sometimes I spent over 7h a day to find some good stuff, write up the reviews and read all the news I had available in my 300+ blogs in google reader. This was a great time, but as life will get in the way I don’t think this will be manegeable anymore in the future. So there will be new articles but they won’t show up at a daily routine.

I know, this post was long overdue, but I really wasn’t in the mood to write anything to anyone in the last time. I hope you’ll excuse me. This being said, I just can summon you to keep believing in independent artists and their music and to support them in every way you can. Keep the spirit of music (and folk especially) alive and don’t let the majors destroy true genius. I’ll be back – and I hope some of you will still be there, too.

Finally I received my full copy of the new Cedarwell album! And as I promised you in the announcement post which featured the first four singles of A Stone, A Leaf, A Door., here is the update on the full length. I won’t make this too long because I think the main points were said in the former post, but some things need to be mentioned though. The album features 14 songs with over 60 minutes running time – Erik’s clearly in a very creative phase right now and this can be heard on the album too. I spoke of a mixture of indie rock and (indie) folk after listening to the four single tracks and I still think this is right, even though I think the record in its entirety drifts more towards the indie rock orientated path. Songs like The Other Side start indie folk like and become more and more indie rock to the end. This burst at the end of tracks is a recurring feature and you can find it in many tracks, e.g. in the over 12 minutes long end track On My Mind Montana or in Middle Of West. Along with those harder moments, there are still quite and calm songs that provide a very chilled feeling like the relaxed Black Lung or the piano driven In A Way – Springtime or the folksy Past Year. You see, it’s hard to put this band into a certain genre, but what I can tell for sure is, that Cedarwell’s sound changed a good bit from his 2008 release Smoky Mountain Bear, which was more folk orientated and less direct and indie rock influenced. One last thing: I spoke of a resemblance between Cedarwell and Yo La Tengo in the first place, however, this resemblance was turned into a very own sound with just slightly cross references to the Hoboken Heroes – and that’s good because this way Cedarwell stays fresh and unique. A Stone, A Leaf, A Door. is clearly one album you should check out in 2010. It will hit the streets in March and until then you can listen to some of the songs featured over at Cedarwell’sMySpace or personal homepage.